Brighton 1 Nottingham Forest 0: Seagulls make amends for crushing Roma defeat with much-needed home win
ANDREW OMABAMIDELE’S own goal handed Brighton a win by the skin of their teeth in what was a do or die fixture.
The Seagulls were lucky not to have gone down to ten men when Jakub Moder was booked for wilding lunging in on Neco Williams and landing with his studs on his ankle.
Craig Pawson on VAR checked the gruesome 66th minute incident and surprisingly agreed with Michael Salisbury’s initial call only to hand out a yellow.
The Seagulls had desperately needed to steady the ship after their season all but imploding after their catastrophic 4-0 drubbing at Roma on Thursday.
They had already crashed out of the FA Cup to Wolves and were thrashed 3-0 by Fulham in the league.
But yesterday’s narrow win was a gleam of hope for the Seagulls getting back on track and securing European football for another season.
You could tell how much it meant by how De Zerbi and his coaching staff embraced for a group cuddle when the final whistle sounded.
They came into the game only winning two Premier League games this year and slipping down to ninth place, but have soared back into seventh.
Consistency has been a key problem with Brighton being decimated with injuries this season.
It doesn’t help that Roberto De Zerbi has chopped and changed the side in every match and yesterday he made a whopping seven changes to the starting XI in Rome.
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De Zerbi notably opted for Bart Verbruggen between the posts instead of Jason Steele as he continues to controversially rotate his goalkeepers.
For Forest it is now just one win in their last 13 matches across all competitions, and they are teetering just above Luton in the relegation zone by three points.
At this rate they are enacting a master plan of dealing with a potential points deduction by ensuring they are already relegated regardless of it.
Simon Adingra caused havoc for Forest on the left-flank, and stung the palms of Matz Sels with a curling shot after being teed up by Pascal Gross.
Jakub Moder then forced Sels to tip out a menacing header after latching onto a pin-point Pascal Gross free-kick.
Ansu Fati had a go with a header which would have gone in had it not ricocheted off Neco Williams.
The deadlock was finally broken on 28 minutes – not that anyone knew much about it.
It all began with Gross whipping in a free-kick towards Moder who was squeezed between Andrew Omabamidele and Sels.
It was actually Omobamidele who turned it in and it went down as an own goal.
Forest hit back strongly with Verbruggen making a crucial save with an outstretched foot on an onrushing Divock Origi.
Nuno Espirito Santo’s side emerged from the restart with more oomph.
And Forest fans were livid when Neco Williams tussled with Pervis Estupinan and the ball deflected behind but a goal kick was given instead of a corner.
Tempers flared, with Estupinan the culprit again for unnecessarily body slamming Anthony Elanga.
And they reached boiling point when Moder was booked for catching Williams’ ankle.
Forest were building and Morgan Gibbs-White supplied a peach of a pass to Chris Wood who shaved the face of goal with a low drive.
Substitute Julio Enciso nearly nabbed his first goal in ten months after shaving the post with a long-range screamer late on.
As the clock was ticking, a looping Cheikhou Koyate header landed on the roof of the net to give the hosts a scare.
There were handbags in the dying moments between Adam Lallana, who was booked for barging into Ibrahim Sanagre.
Remind yourself how the game went with SunSport’s live blog below
- Kick off time: 2pm GMT
- TV/Stream: Not available in the UK
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